Sunapee Vacation

We got back home on Tuesday evening after a lovely few days break in a cottage on Otter Pond, just a few miles north of New Hampshire's Lake Sunapee.

A few months ago we'd gone halvers with friends Matt, Anna and baby Brody Waldron and 'won' a weeks vacation in a silent auction at a UVM alumni event. Trying to plan the hols was tricky with the guys' work schedules so the week turned into a 5 night stay for us, and only 3 nights for the Waldrons. Oh well, it was definitely better than no vacation at all :)

We arrived at the cottage to find it mostly as we expected, cosy and rustic with only a minor ant problem - oh yes, and no hot water...

The view down to the cottage.

The cottage sat right on the waters edge which was perfect for swimming and going out in the pedal boat :)

First morning there and Adam seemed a bit confused as to the point of going on vacation...



Safi had a better idea and headed out for the first dip in the pond (we followed suit later in the day).

This is Sunapee Harbor where we enjoyed an ice cream soda before meeting up with Matt, Anna and Brody who got there around lunchtime.

Saf high steps it into the water for another swim... she's quite obsessed with water now, understandable given the heat.

The next day was Jayne's birthday so, after a nice lunch out in New London and a telephone catch up with family back home, we went for a walk around the local bog... what else could a girl possibly want??

It was quite good fun actually. The whole walk way is made up of wooden planks, some more stable than others, which float on top of the vegetation mat. The whole place moves as you walk and in one place there's a submerged pole you can pull out to see how deep the soggy bogginess is... officially 20' deep.

Adam manages to extract the pole without falling in (by the skin of his teeth)...

Anna nearly over balanced while trying to snap photos of bug eating plants, as did Jayne just after snapping this one... saved only by vigorous windmilling of the arms. Saf didn't really help matters by pulling on her lead in exactly the wrong direction at exactly the wrong moment.

Anna had made Jayne a very chocolatey cake that morning (thanks again Anna!) and here's Matt trying not to singe his eyebrows in the inferno of candles... half way across the floor and he encountered the fan blowing at full speed and had to start over after they all blew out (Is that bad luck?? Will my wish still count??)

Jayne gets to make her wish at last

Brody gets stuck into his Mom's cake and ice cream

Next day we all headed to the top of Mount Sunapee to see what we could see... too steamy hot to walk up...

Beautiful views down over Lake Sunapee

The Waldrons. They took a similar pic of us so we'll post it up if we get hold of a copy.

Pretty flowers and butterflies all over the place

Just about every band stand and harbor in the area has free music at the weekends so that evening we sat out at a small open air blues concert. We picked the only one that wasn't sponsored and we found out why - the popularity of the songs they picked almost made up for how badly they performed most of them ;))

The Waldron's take their last ride out on the pedal boat on the morning of their last day at the cottage. Later Matt and Adam headed out for a round of golf while Anna, Brody and Jayne went into Concord, the state capitol. Anna and Jayne only did a little bit of exploring before they learned there was a Target store nearby so headed off for some shopping instead :)) Oh how we miss Target... our nearest one is in Albany, New York :(

Our last morning at the cottage - this was 5.30am (yes really, and even more surprisingly it was Jayne who was up to take this pic). The place was so tranquil with the morning mist on the water... no water skiers etc at this time of day.